This morning I wrote about the population boom in Dallas-Fort Worth and how fussing about proposed development projects is just spitting in the wind.

Almost a million new people are expected here by 2020 – a combination of folks moving to North Texas and births by people already in the area.

My bottom line to the explosion of coming development and population increase is this is going to happen, no matter how some residents wish it won’t.

That’s especially true when you have the governor of Texas and cities like Plano spending tens of millions of dollars to lure people and jobs from other states.

Even without that, the population in the D-FW area is going to increase sharply in the next decade.

Our readers had a variety of response to this news.

Some think we should try to prevent or slow the growth. Others are ready to tackle the issues that come with it.

“I say bring it on,” one Park Cities resident wrote about the prospect for more highrise and denser development. “This is exactly what we need if Dallas is to become a more ‘walkable’ city.”

Someone else wanted to know, why we “are not preparing for more people with more water, more power, better transportation? Why is that?”

My response was that first you have to decide how to pay for it.

Mark Dotzour, chief economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, warns us all to hang on to our pocketbooks.

“Meeting infrastructure needs is going to be a massive financial challenge for Texas over the next 30 years,” Dotzour wrote. “There is just not enough tax revenue in Texas or from the federal government to cover the costs.

“So we are going to need to be prepared to pay user fees for all kinds of things we used to expect government to give us for free,” he said. “Fees for parks, hunting, fishing and toll roads are going to be the future.”